Greatest of These is Love
by ShirleyAnn66
Summary: She closes her eyes for the last time and opens them to see him waiting for her.


**A/N1:** This fic has helped me work through my reaction to the latest spoilers. That said, I don't think there's anything spoilerish in here, however, please read at your own risk.

 **A/N2:** Influenced in part by _Father. Mother. Warrior. Maiden. Smith. Crone. Stranger._ by H3L. If you haven't read that fic yet, please do—it's _amazing_!

 **A/N3:** That all said, I…don't really know where this came from or how to classify this fic. O.O

 ***/*/*/*/***

She closes her eyes for the last time and opens them to see him waiting for her.

"We have been too long parted," he says.

He opens arms that are losing their shape as she steps into them and yet they feel like home even though her memories of flesh and blood are already as distant as the stars.

"How did you fare without me?" he says-not-says and she would roll her eyes if she still had them.

"You know how much I missed you," she whispers-not-whispers.

"Do they remember us?" he asks, his mortal vanity still part of him even in this realm.

"They always remember us. We are the stuff of songs."

"Can we leave them now?"

"Until they have need of us again."

They soften, swirl, flow together, intertwining, softly knitting their gossamer threads into a pattern as familiar as it has been missed. Two parts of a whole, complete at long last.

*/*/*/*/*

Each time they take on mortal form, their threads part in different ways, going first with one then the other, more of this thread there and less of that thread here. They are sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes more, sometimes the same in body, sometimes not. It never matters. They are the same: the same cloth, the same pattern, the same story, and they belong to each other and no one else.

*/*/*/*/*

Time has no meaning here, their contented peace undisturbed, endless…until another—nameless, faceless—appears, rippling them away from their serenity to look outside themselves once more.

"You are needed," the Stranger says-not-says.

"No."

"Yes."

They speak with one voice but never one mind and even as the two words leave them, their threads, their pattern, begins to loosen.

"They have need of heroes," the Stranger says.

"They always have need of heroes," they say. "We always seem to fall."

"That is why you are heroes. Will you refuse?"

"Yes."

"No."

"We will be separated again and you've only just returned to me."

"We'll be together there, too, and there are pleasures of the flesh we miss."

"Not soon enough. Not long enough. Not happily enough. Let the mortals save themselves. Let the other gods save them."

"You are the greatest of them all," says the Stranger. "Without you, there would be no gods and no followers of them."

"We are tired of being apart," they say in the voice of the Stark children yearning for each other and home.

"We are the ones who lead," they say in the voice of Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa.

"We are the ones who die," they say in the voice of Ned Stark's love for his children and his wife.

"We are the ones who stand firm," they say in the voice of Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen.

"Why must we go?" they say in the voice of Cersei's love for Jaime.

"Because we are why they fight," they say in the voice of all those who defend their homes. "Why else would thousands of men and women and children stand against their enemies if not for love?"

"We will die," they say in the voice of the Kingslayer and Brienne the Beauty.

"We will live in songs," she says.

"Myths," he says.

"Legends."

They stand separate once more, in their new division of threads and patterns, the threads of love in all its incarnations, all its permutations, all its reasons, divided evenly between them. They are not the same as before, but there is familiarity to his eyes, to the line of her chin, that calls back to all the heroes they've been before.

"They have need of you," the Stranger says again, "to be reminded of why they must fight."

"Why cannot the other gods do this without us?" he asks.

"Because Love is the strongest god of all," she says and kisses him with lips made of gossamer and silk.

He closes his eyes and opens them to see a face looming over him—his mother—and weeps for what is to come.

*/*/*/*/*


End file.
